Program

Wednesday, November 2, 2011, at 6:30 (Afterwork Masterworks, performed with no intermission)

Bernard Labadie conductorrichard Paré organ

music by george Frideric HandelWater Music Suite No. 1 in F MajorOrgan Concerto No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 4, No. 1Water Music Suite No. 2 in D MajorThe Chicago Symphony Orchestra is grateful to WBBM Newsradio 780 and 105.9 FM for its generous support as the media sponsor for the Afterwork Masterworks series.

Thursday, November 3, 2011, at 8:00Friday, November 4, 2011, at 8:00

Saturday, November 5, 2011, at 8:00Sunday, November 6, 2011, at 3:00

Bernard Labadie conductorrichard Paré organ

music by george Frideric Handel

Organ Concerto No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 4, No. 1Larghetto e staccatoAllegroAdagioAndante

RiChARD PARé

Organ Concerto No. 4 in F Major, Op. 4, No. 4AllegroAndanteAdagioAllegro

RiChARD PARé

IntermIssIon

Water MusicSuite No. 1 in F MajorSuite No. 3 in G MajorSuite No. 2 in D MajorFirst complete Chicago Symphony subscription concert performances

ONe huNDReD TWeNTy-FiRST SeASON

Chicago symphony orchestrariccardo muti Music DirectorPierre Boulez helen Regenstein Conductor emeritusYo-Yo ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant

This program is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Global Sponsor of the CSO

Comments by PhiLLiP huSCheR

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organ Concerto no. 1 in g minor, op. 4, no. 1

organ Concerto no. 4 in F major, op. 4, no. 4

Handel often was called the greatest organist of his time, no

small accomplishment in the age of Johann Sebastian Bach, his cel-ebrated contemporary and a man he never met. “Handel had an uncom-mon brilliancy and command of finger,” wrote John Mainwaring in his Memoirs of the Life of the late G. F. Handel, published the year after the composer died, “but what distinguished him from all other players who possessed these same qualities was that amazing fullness, force, and energy, which he joined with them.”

Handel began to play the organ as a young boy. After the duke of Saxe-Weissenfels heard the nine-year-old organist, he persuaded Handel’s father to begin the boy’s musical education at once with the local Halle organist Friedrich Zachow. At the age of twelve, he

became Zachow’s assistant organist at the church there. Even though Handel’s success as a composer—first in opera, later in oratorio—eventually overshadowed his performing career, he continued to play the organ in public and his skill at improvisation was legendary. His contemporary, the musical historian John Hawkins, wrote of “his amaz-ing command of the instrument, the fullness of his harmony, the grandeur and dignity of his style, the copiousness of his imagination, and the fertility of his invention.”

In 1709, Handel and Domenico Scarlatti engaged in a now-celebrated contest on organ and harpsichord at the Roman home of Cardinal Ottoboni, the employer of the composer Arcangelo Corelli. After hours of improvisation by these two great keyboard players, Scarlatti emerged as the king of the

george Frideric HandelBorn February 23, 1685, Halle, Saxony, Germany.Died April 14, 1759, London, England.

organ Concerto no. 1 in g minor, op. 4, no. 1

ComPosed1735–36

FIrst PerFormanCeFebruary 19, 1736, London

onLY PrevIous Cso PerFormanCesJanuary 21 & 22, 1898, Auditorium Theatre. Alexandre Guilmant, organ, with Theodore Thomas conducting

InstrumentatIonsolo organ, two oboes, one bassoon, strings

aPProxImate PerFormanCe tIme14 minutes

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harpsichord, Handel of the organ. At the very end of Handel’s life, when blindness put a stop to his composing days—early in 1751, he made a note in the score of his new oratorio Jeptha that he was begin-ning to have difficulty seeing—he was still able to perform his organ concertos in public, improvising the solo passages. (Handel eventually had surgery on his eyes, performed by the famous English oculist Sir John Taylor, a cataract specialist, who, by coincidence, had operated on Bach when the composer was lecturing in Leipzig in 1750, the last year of Bach’s life.)

For an organist of such skill and fame, it is surprising that Handel wrote so little music for organ until relatively late in his life, and that he left no works in the traditional solo forms, such as the preludes and fugues by Bach, for example. What we do have, however, are a handful of organ concertos, the earliest ones by any composer that have come down to us. Handel composed his first organ concertos in the mid-1730s, to be inserted

into performances of his oratorios. The concerto for organ and small orchestra was essentially Handel’s own invention, and his were written to be played by Handel himself—a way of demonstrating his virtuosity as a composer and as a performer at the same time. Apparently some of the solo sections were improvised and therefore never written down, not even when John Walsh pub-lished the first book of six concertos in 1738—the op. 4 set from which the concertos performed this week are drawn. The G minor concerto was intended for Alexander’s Feast, which was first performed on February 19, 1736. The F major concerto [not performed on November 2] was designed to be performed as an interlude in Athalia in April 1735. Both works combine brilliant fast and florid music with adagio movements that are essen-tially organ solos—moments that allowed Handel to take the spot-light and remind his audiences that he was not only a popular composer and celebrated performer, but also a peerless improviser.

organ Concerto no. 4 in F major, op. 4, no. 4 (November 3–6 only)

ComPosed1735

FIrst PerFormanCeApril 1, 1735, London

onLY PrevIous Cso PerFormanCesApril 3 & 4, 1908, Orchestra hall. Wilhelm Middelschulte, organ, with Frederick Stock conducting

InstrumentatIonsolo organ, two oboes, one bassoon, strings

aPProxImate PerFormanCe tIme16 minutes

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Water Music

Suite No. 1 in F MajorSuite No. 3 in G Major (November 3–6 only)Suite No. 2 in D Major (November 3–6 only)

Unlike his contemporaries Bach (born just nineteen days later),

Vivaldi, and Telemann, Handel has never gone out of fashion. His oratorio Messiah has helped to keep his name alive, of course. But other pieces, such as the majestic aria “Ombra mai fu” from the opera Serse (better known to amateur pianists and greatest-hits record producers as Handel’s Largo), the lively set of pieces he wrote to accompany an evening of fire-works, and his engaging suites of Water Music, also have been widely performed, even in times when baroque music was neither well known nor appreciated.

Handel was the among most popular composers of his day and, particularly after he visited London in 1710 and then moved there for good in 1712, he commanded a huge following and was in great demand both as a composer and performer—he excelled on organ and harpsichord—for the rest of his life. (After he became a British subject in 1727, he started spelling his name George Frideric Handel rather than the Georg Friederich Händel which appears on his birth certificate.)

Raised in northern Germany, where he received a thorough musical education (and became

george Frideric Handel

ComPosed1717

FIrst PerFormanCeJuly 17, 1717, on the Thames River

FIrst Cso PerFormanCeDecember 13, 1901, Auditorium Theatre. (Selections) Theodore Thomas conducting

most reCent Cso PerFormanCeNovember 20, 2007, Orchestra hall. (Selections) Nicholas Kraemer conducting.

InstrumentatIonSuite No. 1: two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, strings, harpsichord

Suite No. 2: two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, strings, harpsichord

Suite No. 3: flute, recorder, two oboes, two bassoons, strings, harpsichord

aPProxImate PerFormanCe tImeSuite No. 1: 32 minutesSuite No. 3: 13 minutesSuite No. 2: 10 minutes

Cso reCordIng1946. Suite, arr. harty. Désiré Defauw conducting. RCA

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a friend of Telemann), and later trained in the operatic business in Italy, Handel arrived in London an unusually cosmopolitan composer. Determined to make a name for himself with London’s opera-going public, he succeeded with his first attempt, Rinaldo, which not only included much dazzling music (some of it borrowed from works he had written in Italy), but real spec-tacle as well, including, in one aria, the release of a flock of sparrows that set the audience buzzing.

It was with the Water Musicthat he made his earliest indelible impression on the London public at large—his first big splash, as it were—on July 17, 1717, some six years after the triumph of Rinaldo. “On Wednesday Evening, at about 8, the King took Water at Whitehall in an open Barge,” begins the Daily Courant report of the extravaganza accompanied by what we now know as Handel’s Water Music. King George I (it was his successor, King George II, who

started the tradition of standing for the Hallelujah Chorus) and a large group of English nobility sailed up the Thames River that eve-ning to Chelsea, where they were served supper. So many “Persons of Quality” attended, and there were so many boats “that the whole River in a manner was cover’d.” Apparently, the party didn’t break up until three in the morning (the king arrived home at St. James’s Palace at about four-thirty).

Although royal barge processions were common under George I—to meet the ships of visiting dignitar-ies, or for special holiday cruises—none boasted background music as lavish as the score Handel provided in 1717. According to the Daily Courant, one of the river barges was reserved just for the musicians, “wherein were 50 instruments of all sorts who play’d . . . the finest Symphonies, compos’d express for this Occasion, by Mr. Hendel: which his Majesty liked so well, that he caus’d it to be plaid over

tHe Water Music suItesFollowing are the movements for each of the three Water Music suites performed this week.

suIte no. 1 In F majorOvertureAdagio e staccato[No tempo indicated]Andante[No tempo indicated]AirMinuetbourréehornpipe[No tempo indicated]

suIte no. 3 In g major[No tempo indicated]Rigaudon[No tempo indicated]Menuet[No tempo indicated][No tempo indicated][No tempo indicated]

suIte no. 2 In d major[No tempo indicated]Alla hornpipeMinuetLentementbourrée

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three times in going and return-ing.” (Handel’s band evidently kept going until the king himself was safely back on land—more than eight hours of service, long before unions regulated such things.)

In 1734, Handel’s publisher, John Walsh, started selling suites of what he advertised as Celebrated Water Musick, the first important printed source (minus an adjec-tive and the final “k”) of today’s much-loved Water Music. (Walsh had already published selected movements in other collections.) In 1743, the year of the first London performance of Messiah, he issued a transcription of the Water Music for solo harpsichord. But it wasn’t until 1788, nearly three decades after the composer’s death, that the complete Water Music was finally published in full score. It is likely that the tradition of grouping Handel’s vast assortment of musical numbers into three distinct suites began with that publication, not with the composer.

The first of the suites is some-times called a horn suite, because

of the prominence of those instru-ments (introduced into an English orchestra for the first time in the Water Music); the second is identified by the use of trumpets; and the more intimate third [not performed on November 2] is assumed to represent indoor music that accompanied the royal dinner. Each of the three suites begins with an obligatory grand overture and ends with jubilant music. In between comes a loose assortment of lovely slow movements and tradi-tional dances, including the courtly minuet (an elegant dance in triple meter), the lively French bourrée (a folk dance in duple meter), and, in the first two suites, the quintes-sentially British hornpipe—one of Händel’s first efforts to become, simply, Handel.

Phillip Huscher is the program annota-tor for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.©

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